Thursday, May 3, 2007

This Sunday's 60 Minutes will have CNN viewers checking the channel to see if they are really watching CBS. Anderson Cooper is doing a very interesting piece about art and it's owner, a very spunky truck driver. This tease from the CBS site:

The art world calls it "connoisseurship." Teri Horton calls it bull%@#. The plainspoken 74-year-old knew nothing about art years ago when she spent $5 to buy a big, drippy painting that she says a fingerprint proves is a $50 million Jackson Pollock.

But when art connoisseurs say her painting doesn't "feel like" or they don't "believe it's" a Pollock, the ex-truck driver's BS detector beeps like an old fuzzbuster. Horton tells her story to CNN's Anderson Cooper, this Sunday, May 6, at 7 p.m. ET/PT on 60 Minutes.

Two of the connoisseurs are featured in "Who the %$#@ is Jackson Pollock?," a documentary about Horton and her quest. "It's pretty, it's superficial and frivolous and I don't believe it's a Jackson Pollock," says Thomas Hoving, the former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Says Ben Heller, an art collector who owns Pollock's work: "Doesn’t feel like a Pollock, doesn’t sing like a Pollock, doesn't fail like a Pollock."

Their methodology fails Horton. "There is no way anybody can get up and look at that painting, or any Pollock for that matter, and be able — by visual examination, and wait for the mystical feeling that they get that comes over them — to decide whether it is or whether it is not authentic," she says. "They call it 'connoisseurship,'" Horton tells Cooper. "[I call it] bull&%#!"

A fingerprint on the back of her canvas, which a forensic art expert says matches a print from a paint can in the Long Island studio where Pollock created his works, is all the proof Horton needs. She is so confident that, after the print was matched, she turned down a $2 million offer for the painting. "Be fair with me and I'll sell it," she tells Cooper. "No. I'm not going to let them steal it from me."

The art world remains reluctant to accept the fingerprint instead of a provenance — the usual document of authenticity that accompanies works of art. Horton reasons that if fingerprints can convict criminals, they can identify painters.

Denied so far, Horton in undaunted. "But how dare they tell me it's not authentic? They laugh at me and say, 'You don't know what you're talking about,'" says Horton, now wagging her finger at the naysayers, "and I say, well, one of these days, I just want to say 'neener, neener, neener, I told you so.'" To see AC's reporters notebook and a preview of the segment follow the link.

Also on Sunday's show is Lesley Stahl interviewing Lou Dobbs on immigration. Here's the tease on that segment and the linkto see the video:

He has never called for the deportation of all illegal immigrants, but Lou Dobbs believes the U.S. could pull off such a feat if it really wanted to.

The CNN anchor, whose stance against illegal immigration has helped raise his ratings but also fueled criticism, speaks to 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl this Sunday, May 6, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

Dobbs is against amnesty programs for illegal immigrants and the president's guest worker proposal, so Stahl wonders whether Dobbs thinks the government could deport all illegal immigrants. "I've never called for their deportation," says Dobbs. "But at the same time, when this president and open-borders, illegal-alien-amnesty advocates say, 'You can't deport them,' my answer is, 'You want to bet?' because this is the United States. I think this country can do anything it sets its mind to," he tells Stahl.

Dobbs hosted "Moneyline," a business program on CNN, for more than 20 years. He has transformed himself into a purveyor of "news, debate and opinion," in the words used to introduce his current CNN program, "Lou Dobbs Tonight."

The debate is often about illegal immigration. He is a believer in curtailing illegal immigrants' access to some social services. "I happen to think that it is necessary, given the fact that the federal government won't control immigration and won't control our borders," Dobbs tells Stahl. Dobbs says he's not for shutting off medical services, but illegal immigrants' use of other entitlements and the public schools is problematic. "Going to food stamps — should taxpayers be paying for food stamps? Should taxpayers be burdened with schools that are overcrowded?" Dobbs asks. "[Taxpayers'] children, therefore, are being denied education. Those are very serious issues," he says.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus accused Dobbs of being anti-Hispanic for these types of views. "I was asked if I’d ever eaten a taco before, for God’s sake," says Dobbs, who has been married to a Mexican-American for 25 years. Hispanics have called for his job, and Dobbs finds such criticism ironic because he grew up on a small farm and picked crops alongside migrants. "I am probably one of the few people in the debate who actually has [worked with migrants]. I’ve got the greatest respect for those folks," he tells Stahl.

Dobbs' opinions are a main feature of his nightly program — behavior that would exclude him from the classic definition of journalist as an objective reporter. Nevertheless, he still considers himself a journalist. Here's his opinion on that: "The idea that a reporter should be disqualified because he or she actually cares, actually isn't neutral about the well-being of the country and its people, that's absurd," he tells Stahl.

2 comments:

If connoisseurs really believed it was not a true Pollock painting then why was Horton offered 2 mil for it. Well. it looks like an interesting 60 minutes. When it comes to arts it is also a different and intriguing world.

In cnn.com there was a poll conducted if the US allows so many immigrants. Results yield that many americans about 80% plus said yes and about 10% plus said no. If these were illegal immigrants how come they would have access to social services? Isn't that ironic.